Lectures.

Lectures. At most British universities, lectureships have been endowed for the perpetual dissemination of opinions favoured by the founder; and to these, which were originally almost always of a theological or religious kind, have lately been added some of a wider interest, embracing science, philosophy, archaeology, history, and the like. Among theological lectureships in England of greater or less antiquity are the Bampton, delivered at Oxford; the Hulsean, at Cambridge; the Boyle, at London; the Warburtonian, at Lincoln's Inn; the Congregational Union lectures, instituted in 1873 in continuation of the former Congregational lectures; and the Hibbert (in comparative religion), at Oxford and London. The Donnellan lectures are given at Dublin; the Baird, Croall, and Cunningham lectures, at Edinburgh. The Fernley lecturers follow the place of meeting of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference. Courses of Gifford lectures on natural religion are delivered at all the Scotch universities, while the Burnett lectures—hardly now to be recognised as identical with the original foundation—are connected with Aberdeen. At Cambridge are the Rede lecture and the Clark lectures in English literature; at Edinburgh, the Rhind in archaeology; while the chief towns in Scotland are visited by the Combe lecturers on physiology, and peripatetic Unitarians of the M'Quaker foundation. Distinct from these are such professorships for a fixed period as those of poetry and art at Oxford; the endowed readerships, as in ancient history and the like, at the universities; the courses of lectures given at the Royal Institution or the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution; or endowments for special purposes, as the Harvey, Croonian, and Plumian orations. The Lowell Institute at Boston provides annual courses of free public lectures on religion, science, and the arts, and since its foundation (1839-40) has found audience for many distinguished English as well as American lecturers. See separate articles on the more important of the above lectures.